Moby Dick; or the Whale

by Herman Melville

Overview

Moby-Dick is an 1851 novel by Herman Melville. It describes the ill-fated voyage of the whaling ship Pequod to find and destroy the eponymous white whale, driven by the obsessive Captain Ahab. The language is highly symbolic and many themes run throughout the work. The narrator's reflections, along with complex descriptions of the grueling work of whaling and personalities of his shipmates, are woven into a profound meditation on hubris, providence, nature, society, and the human struggle for meaning, happiness and salvation. Moby-Dick is often considered the epitome of American Romanticism. wiki

Product Details

BN ID:	2940014802178
Publisher:	Robin Michell
Publication date:	06/13/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	542 KB

About the Author

Herman Melville was born in August 1, 1819, in New York City, the son of a merchant. Only twelve when his father died bankrupt, young Herman tried work as a bank clerk, as a cabin-boy on a trip to Liverpool, and as an elementary schoolteacher, before shipping in January 1841 on the whaler Acushnet, bound for the Pacific. Deserting ship the following year in the Marquesas, he made his way to Tahiti and Honolulu, returning as ordinary seaman on the frigate United States to Boston, where he was discharged in October 1844. Books based on these adventures won him immediate success. By 1850 he was married, had acquired a farm near Pittsfield, Massachussetts (where he was the impetuous friend and neighbor of Nathaniel Hawthorne), and was hard at work on his masterpiece Moby-Dick.

Literary success soon faded; his complexity increasingly alienated readers. After a visit to the Holy Land in January 1857, he turned from writing prose fiction to poetry. In 1863, during the Civil War, he moved back to New York City, where from 1866-1885 he was a deputy inspector in the Custom House, and where, in 1891, he died. A draft of a final prose work, Billy Budd, Sailor, was left unfinished and uncollated, packed tidily away by his widow, where it remained until its rediscovery and publication in 1924.

Date of Birth:

August 1, 1819

Date of Death:

September 28, 1891

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Place of Death:

New York, New York

Education:

Attended the Albany Academy in Albany, New York, until age 15